Wednesday, March 23, 2011

Practicum 5- Lauren

When I was logged onto one of the episode discussion forums on the Gleefan website the other day, someone posted a comment that revealed information about the show that hasn’t yet happened on air. A reply was posted merely minutes later basically yelling at that initial poster for not following specific guidelines for a post that includes material that may be labeled as a “spoiler.” In the “Information and Important Announcements” forum, the creators clearly lay out the procedure for revealing information that may “spoil” the show for other fans.

Spoilers are defined as "anything that provides 'information' about the show; more clearly, it is anything involving plotlines (ie. kisses, songs, confrontations, crying, break-ups, etc) not released on FOX television" and should be placed behind spoiler tags when not posting in the Spoilers section.

There were subsequent posts, there after, still hounding that initial poster. It actually took awhile before one of the moderator’s actually comment his/herself to let that poster know that the post was indeed a spoiler and the specific instructions for doing so. I don’t believe anything happened in terms of that poster receiving any consequences for that specific post. But I do know that people seemed PRETTY upset about the sharing of future information. Though this is just a show to most, this is something of great importance to some and these users/fans take their love of this show extremely seriously.

I think the issue of spoilers is unique to my fan based site because it’s about a television show. I know that Michael is doing a discussion forum for a sports team, and wouldn’t have such an issue because no one knows what’s going to happen or who’s going to win the upcoming game—which isn’t necessarily the case with a television show. I’m out for now, but until then… I’m going to be sure to carefully chose my content of my posts as to not get publically humiliated by my local Glee fans online!

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